Alan Bennett: I'm not "happy" but I'm not unhappy about it.

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours

Alan Bennett

reading motivational inspirational

Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.

Alan Bennett

other-worlds wish book

Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.

Alan Bennett

moving-forward inspirational life

Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.

Alan Bennett

now-or-never second-chance next

Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.

Alan Bennett

remembers-you remember-you people

Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.

Alan Bennett

wall inspirational funny

What I'm above all primarily concerned with is the substance of life, the pith of reality. If I had to sum up my work, I suppose that's it really: I'm taking the pith out of reality.

Alan Bennett

concerned substance reality

History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.

Alan Bennett

incapability buckets men

If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.

Alan Bennett

squash flower thinking

I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?

Alan Bennett

saws ends civilization

Kafka could never have written as he did had he lived in a house. His writing is that of someone whose whole life was spent in apartments, with lifts, stairwells, muffled voices behind closed doors, and sounds through walls. Put him in a nice detached villa and he'd never have written a word.

Alan Bennett

wall nice writing

The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.

Alan Bennett

majority sunday people

The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.

Alan Bennett

reading literature book

Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.

Alan Bennett

queens literature humanity

We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.

Alan Bennett

organization change people

You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.

Alan Bennett

book

An article on playwrights in the Daily Mail , listed according to Hard Left, Soft Left, Hard Right, Soft Right and Centre. I am not listed. I should probably come under Soft Centre.

Alan Bennett

centre daily-mail should

I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam's scheme of things. "The thing is," I said finally, "he won the Nobel Prize." "Well," she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, "I'm not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat."

Alan Bennett

land mother beautiful

What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

Alan Bennett

reading doors book

Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don't try and mean it. Nor prayers. The liturgy is best treated and read as if it's someone announcing the departure of trains.

Alan Bennett

prayer trying mean